Be a leader rather than manager

I made a committment to myslef to write this article some time ago. As usual with all battle plans, they die with first salvo :-)

Motivation was clear, I am reaching significant milestone of 10 years working for the same company and wanted to retrospect just a tiny bit. People tend to congratulate others for reaching such a significant milestone and I was always on the fence about it. Is loyalty really that great? Does loyalty make you an asset? Are you still bringing value and is there still space for learning and growing?

Anyway…..out of those 10 years, I’ve been working 8 years in some people management role. I’ve spent countless hours on overnight incident calls with my team, stood in datacenter when it became silent, slept under the table with my team during 48hr DR tests, spent milions of $$$ on technology, traveled alot, got inspired by others, failed, tried again, succeeded and then failed once more.

All that experience makes you appreciate people you are working with, makes you understand who you can rely on and how much team work matters (believe me there isn’t just a single hero in datacenter-down scenario).

As a manager of teams in Europe, then in Europe and US and India I always nurtured culture of trust. Being open, honest in your feedback and willing to explain context and motives is what makes people trust you. Managers don’t usually need to explain themselves, they seek obedience, focus and results. Those are all great things to have, don’t get me wrong, but I was always the guy who was looking for creativity and understanding in achieving goals. In other words, when people trust your motives and understand WHY something has to happen, I love to have people on my team that can understnad WHAT has to be done and HOW by themselves.

This is absolute must when operating in international space, time is not on your side, there will be moments where people on other side of the world will need to cover your back, make decisions on your behalf and if all you developed in your team are blind followers (pawns) it is recipe for 16 hours long shifts, late meetings and middle of the night escallations

There is a strong distinction between leader and manager - someone wiser than me once said, “Leaders are the ones picking which hill team/s needs to climb”. Leaders make sure route is clear, well understood and everyone knows their way up and understand what is on top. Managers are making sure people don’t get lost on their way up, don’t stroll somewhere else, and don’t fall behind.

Both leaders and managers are needed, choice is always yours.